Spotlight on Martin Hembling – Commercial Director
In our latest blog, we catch up with Martin Hembling about his career at Swiftclean in various roles spanning over two decades.
Martin’s unwavering dedication to Swiftclean is truly inspiring. As our Commercial Director, he is a shining example of what it means to be a long-serving member of our team, having worked with us for over 24 years.
He initially joined as an Operative in March 1999 and was put to work with two other existing operatives, John Eeles and Richard Warner, as part of the field team. Both of these also still work at Swiftclean today! Between them, they have over 90 years experience of working on air and water hygiene contracts!
After a few months at Swiftclean, Martin progressed to Acting Supervisor, which was then formalised in January 2000.
“Things were very different back then”, he reflects. “There were no mobile phones so each day when we were on site, we’d find a phone box to call back to the office to find out what our jobs were for the following day. Neither did we use email or have an online portal so all our job instructions were printed out and put into a job pack for us to refer to.
We used disposable cameras to take before and after photographs of the work we carried out on-site and returned these to the office for processing. Once they’d been developed, we’d go back into the office to go through the photographs with the service delivery coordinator to ensure that the photos were matched correctly in the post-clean report.
Now, site crews are issued with mobile phones and their jobs are accessible via our online portal which also allows the client to access their reports and raise issues quickly and easily”.
One of Martin’s more memorable jobs took place at London Zoo where his team were needed to clean the air grilles in the animal hospital. They were told to be very quiet but unfortunately, something was dropped making a loud noise, which woke up an extremely irate silver-backed gorilla! Needless to say, the job was completed in record time.
He’s proud to say that he has crawled through the ventilation systems at some of the highest levels of the British constitution – from Buckingham Palace to Number 10 and the Cabinet Office. Don’t ask him any more about it though as he’s signed the Official Secrets Act!
After three years working on site, he moved into Sales in 2002, as a consultant covering the London/Kent/Surrey area. His first major contract win was at The Barbican in London, this equated to 88% of his yearly sales target at that time.
Martin became Swiftclean’s Sales Manager in 2005, supporting and educating a team of four sales consultants. His remit extended to include the Midlands-based sales team when he was promoted to UK Sales Manager in 2007.
As the company expanded, in 2009 he took on the new role of Sales & Marketing Director – working hard to educate and inform the wider industry of the risks of ignoring the cleaning of ventilation systems that tend to be out of sight out of mind by hosting a variety of events for the London Fire Brigade and AXA Insurance. During this time, he carried out numerous other compliance awareness training events throughout the UK for a wide range of clients and industry bodies.
In 2018, he returned to the Service Delivery department to take up the position of Service Delivery Director. With his knowledge of the industry and experience in finding solutions to the day-to-day challenges that faced our external site crews, he brought in newer, more up-to-date brushing equipment for duct cleaning which was easier to carry and use, and gave a faster, more thorough clean leading to improved job efficiencies.
During his time in Service Delivery, the role of Team Leader was also initiated. The Team Leaders were often promoted internally from staff already at Supervisor level. They were brought in to give quicker on-site guidance to the local field teams, allowing them to continue working and resulting in fewer aborted jobs.
For the same reason, extra satellite offices were also created where the site teams could travel to collect extra equipment, the need for which may not have been previously identified. Again, this led to improved efficiencies and an increase in customer satisfaction.
Moving back to Sales in 2023, Martin became Commercial Director responsible for new product/service development, Health & Safety, Sales mentoring, and the Tender Team.
As the head of our Tender Team, along with other directors, managers and staff, he gives us valuable insights on how to respond to tender questionnaires, helping us to win sizeable government or council tenders in air or water hygiene.
He is often called upon by our site and sales teams for his extensive knowledge to improve their understanding not only of industry regulations and how to evaluate works but also to understand how work can be carried out with the minimum of fuss to clients. Because of this, part of his role includes the mentoring of the National Sales Managers for both the air and water divisions.
His knowledge is constantly being updated and developed by attending regular networking events with clients, competitors and industry leaders.
Martin says,
“At Swiftclean, every day is different and over the years, I have met some wonderful people some of whom I consider to be my closest friends. Our site teams are some of the best-trained teams around, a testament to the company’s long-term undertaking towards education, not just for our employees but also for those of our competitors who we offer training to through our in-house training academy”.
As to what lies in the future, he comments:
“At this stage of my career, I see an important part of my role as company succession planning – mentoring the staff, in particular middle management to ensure robust knowledge allowing Swiftclean to grow and flourish and continue to be a force for good in the air and water hygiene industry”.
Martin can be contacted at m.hembling@swiftclean.co.uk
